


Wretched Thing

by therunawaytoph



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Mutual Pining, flowery language, they are children - Freeform, they're child soldiers and i am sad and use flowery language and poetry to cope, this was a vent fic but here it is anyways
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:13:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26337010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therunawaytoph/pseuds/therunawaytoph
Summary: Two damaged boys sit in front of a hearth. What an awful fate to have a heart amidst a war.
Relationships: Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 39





	Wretched Thing

The western temple wind is bracing and fragile against the unyielding nightfall. Two damaged boys gaze intently into the blaze before them in the desolate muteness as to not rouse the children near them. Sokka distantly recollects their three allies who migrated to the opposite arena of the temple to observe the constellations and quasars. The Duke had ached to identify the same twinklers he would see beside his parents with his new keepers. He was barely eight, Sokka remembered, far too green and naive to endure so much. Sokka had never lived as lighthearted as the Duke. Zuko less so. Sokka was the isolated son, the lone soldier forgotten in his tribe following his father’s vacancy. He studies the boy with unsteady and unreliable breathing. Zuko was- is- the despised heir of a deranged tyrant, merciless and recalcitrant, who inflicted an emblem of his scorn upon his son’s features. Sokka knew this. It was uttered in hushed murmurs across the state he infiltrated with his cares. The wound is mended, scarcely, crudely, and it is aged. He wonders the years his friend held when he was mutilated, ruined, destroyed, by his patriarch.

The embers decay unobtrusively and fume, Zuko questions if he will cease in an identical manner. The blind girl- Toph- is eleven. He had eavesdropped utterance of her throughout his times as a refugee, rumors of the most celebrated earthbender to have lived. Zuko endures witness to her command over the element, the sureness, the kinship, the connection, she possesses. Toph sees with her bending she says. Zuko understands. He supposes he may be the only one. His lungs seize fire and set his skin ablaze when he bends. She is substance, he is destruction. Zuko regards Aang, the Avatar, the messiah, the child, dreaming alongside Katara, the guardian, the fighter, the bloodbender. Spirits, they are so young. Truthfully, Zuko and Sokka are not enormously more grown, the boy close to him has been anticipating and drilling himself for this instance his whole life just as he has. Sokka grasped more of this perpetual and ruthless war than Zuko could aspire to. War is unrelenting, unforgiving, distant. Yet Sokka produces mysticism, hope, to the children he has chosen to care for. Nobody has forced his hand or made constant babysitting a soldier’s duty. Zuko admires him. Rebounding, forgiving, exceptionally unlike the war he was drafted to. 

“Sokka,” his voice is coarse from neglect, “do you sincerely believe that we will have equipped Aang amply enough to overthrow and slaughter my father should we survive to do so?” The inquiry is morbid, he acknowledges, though the mere concept of what might occur erodes his soul with each terrifying scenario. 

“I can not be sure,” Sokka is withdrawn and softspoken presently, he almost never exists in silence. “I am assured of very few things presently. I am certain Aang will do everything he must. As will Katara and Toph. As will you and I.” Sokka’s eyes bore into Zuko’s. Both recall learning that eyes are portholes to one’s soul but never absolutely understood until this instant. 

Sokka’s eyes are wearied. He has witnessed infinitely more in brief moons than many do in eternal lifetimes. They are not dull or lifeless, never dead. They nevertheless twinkle when he articulates to Zuko his many affections- physics, engineering, family- moreover, they are considering, familiar, safe. Zuko’s eyes are both more troublesome and more natural for Sokka to gaze in. He concentrates on Zuko’s right eye. It has endured bystander to atrocities Sokka is unable to comprehend, one can discern merely by the sinister discoloration below his eye. The faint crow’s feet in the corner of his eye betray the rough demeanor he often permeates. He has smiled and cherished, he still does, though scarcer. Zuko’s left eye is painful to study at times. A fragment of Zuko’s profile is no longer his, a keepsake of a most shameful remembrance. A portion has healed clumsily, Sokka regards, but the precise yet inexperienced restorative output reads like a diary admission to Sokka. He understands Zuko and his Uncle Iroh separated, but the meticulous concern for his nephew’s face reveals that Zuko was not truly abandoned through his banishment.

Zuko severs the eye contact. “Yes. I will.” The hearth’s luminosity appears more attractive than Sokka’s troubled gaze. “My mother, before her oblivion, proclaimed love and war to be the equivalent facets of a wretched coin. I suppose I am beginning to learn.”

Sokka joins Zuko in watching the burning before them. “How wretched it is, to love amidst a war.”

Zuko lacerates his gaze from the fire only to notice Sokka glancing away from him. “Wholly, completely, entirely wretched,” he concedes.

**Author's Note:**

> don't text  
> or do idc


End file.
